Random new word of the day

[大块头]

Ha, well I'm glad I did that image search in an incognito window... You should add this word to CC-CDICT... it's not in any of the dictionaries.

[mungouk]

Quarantine-related, probably guessable, and rather cute...

 

       水银    shuǐ yín    mercury; quicksilver

Referring to wikipedia, water-silver is directly analogous to the Greek 'hydrargyros', which is ultimately where the chemical symbol Hg comes from. I'd always wondered about that.

 

Quarantine-related because it seems we've all been given Mercury thermometers to use when reporting our 体温 twice a day.

 

      上报体温       shàng bào tǐ wēn         to report (body) temperature

 

Edit to add: 

 

       水星    Shuǐ xīng    Mercury (planet)

 

one of the 5 visible planets: Mercury 水星, Venus 金星, Mars 火星, Jupiter 木星, Saturn 土星
 

Possibly an old alchemical connection here somewhere...?

 

[Lu]

钢镚  gāngbèng small coin of low value

 

Pleco did not only not know this word, it didn't even recognise my written input. Fortunately google is pretty smart.

[大块头]

24 minutes ago, Lu said:

Pleco did not only not know this word, it didn't even recognise my written input.

 

But it shows up for me?

 

[Demonic_Duck]

   

31 minutes ago, Lu said:

Pleco did not only not know this word

 

Do you not have CC-CEDICT enabled as one of your Pleco dictionaries? Because it's in there.

[Lu]

You are both right. It's in there. It only didn't recognise my written input and I stopped searching Pleco once I'd found it online.

[mungouk]

核酸检测      hé suān jiǎn cè      Nucleic Acid (RNA) Test

[abcdefg]

On 10/28/2020 at 9:17 PM, mungouk said:

Quarantine-related, probably guessable, and rather cute...

       水银    shuǐ yín    mercury; quicksilver

 

Ah, you anticipated my question. Thanks. 

 

On 10/28/2020 at 9:17 PM, mungouk said:

Edit to add:        水星    Shuǐ xīng    Mercury (planet)

 

One of my haunts in Old Kunming (not only pre-Covid but in the Golden Years pre-严打) was a large luxury sauna out on the west edge of town named 水星温泉。I never looked the word up in the dictionary, assuming it meant something more literal along the lines of "water star" and was referring to how stellar their deep hot spring waters were and how their service followed suit. 

[Jim]

鲁蛇 - slang for "loser" due to similar sound, originating in Taiwan. https://baike.baidu.com/item/鲁蛇/15558485?fr=aladdin

[大块头]

My Chinese friends brought this word up when discussing the recent US election.

 

信息茧房

 

Spoiler

echo chamber

 

[Jim]

凭吊 "visit and ponder on the past" it says here https://baike.baidu.com/item/凭吊 which would fit with the context I saw it in, one of those ones where the characters aren't obscure so you think you might know it but realise you don't. Seems to have extended slightly to include more abstract historical research/thought.

[Jan Finster]

 

 啊    ā    interjection of surprise; Ah!; Oh!
啊     á    interjection expressing doubt or requiring answer; Eh?; what?
啊     ǎ    interjection of surprise or doubt; Eh?; My!; what's up?
啊     à    interjection or grunt of agreement; uhm; Ah, OK; expression of recognition; Oh, it's you!
啊     a    modal particle ending sentence, showing affirmation, approval, or consent
 

This is some native level subtlety I will never master ?

[jannesan]

9 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

This is some native level subtlety I will never master ?

 

I think you will, don't focus on memorizing these, but in my experience I started using most these filler-sounds quite naturally, just from imitating how Chinese use them.

And even if you don't use all of these in your speech, you will still understand what the other persons means;)

[mungouk]

青皮桔    qīng pí jú    calamansi (fruit)

 

This wasn't in any dictionaries I tried, but I recognised the name calamansi from when I lived in India. 

Literally green-skinned tangerine/mandarin orange.  According to wikipedia, a hybrid of Kumquat and probably mandarin orange. Very refreshing as a drink!

 

 

See also https://zhidao.baidu.com/question/328379124285732765.html

 

 

 

 

[大块头]

One I ran into recently:

 

摸鱼

 

Spoiler

to goof off; to loaf on a job

 

Now quit feeling the fish on Chinese-Forums and get back to work! 

 

[889]

This is a fun one. It comes straight from English, but it's not at all intuitive. Until you see the answer.

 

脫口秀

 

Spoiler

Television chat programme.

 

[889]

This one is also from English, but it should be pretty obvious:

 

美德信号

 

Spoiler

Virtue signaling.

 

[大块头]

This innocent-looking word from the proposed HSK 3.0 vocabulary list may be defined in most dictionaries as "notebook", but don't do an image search for it on a work computer!

 

本子

 

Spoiler

doujinshi: Japanese-style self-published graphic novels that often contain erotic content

 

(encountered in one of the answers to a HiNative question about sex-ed in China)

 

[大块头]

If you know your country names and history you can probably figure out which 20th century war this is referring to:

 

两伊战争
 

Spoiler

Iran-Iraq war

 

[大块头]

科学怪人

 

Spoiler

Frankenstein's monster